Sic Semper Tyrannis

Great Road Trips I Have Known-Episode III:Back in Training

So, today I will relate the events of a road trip I took with Aaron, my rock star buddy over Spring Break about four or five years ago. We were driving to Colorado Springs to see the wedding of a friend. In a castle. Close to the Garden of the Gods. And then I was to drive Aaron further into Colorado for a church ski trip and drive home myself. I had never seen Colorado and had been bitten by the “driving long hours by myself” bug when I went to New England.

Well, it turned out that I got a little bit more than I bargained for. I guess it never occurred to me that driving in March in Colorado meant driving in snow. (The fact that Aaron was going on a ski trip should have tipped me off.)  I was also following another car the whole way to Colorado Springs. The pressure of following another person has a way of killing your Jack Kerouac vibe.

But as this was my first time to ever be west of Oklahoma, I was enthralled with the Southwestern scenery. This was my first taste of vast, open space. Driving east, you never seem to be too far from another town or city, or at the very least a gas station/Subway combination.

And as we turned north in New Mexico and gradually increased altitude, the weather turned a little bit snowy, which seemed kind of like an obstacle to my driving experience.

The wedding came and went and Aaron and I were off to Crested Butte, which was only a few inches further on the map, but might as well have been the path to the Black Gate of Mordor. I had never driven on these kinds of mountain roads before and there were four things impeding my enjoyment of this new scenery: 1) it was snowing hard, 2) it was getting dark, 3) my car was old and had one known problem with it- a bad CV boot, and 4) I had a passenger along. Driving in less than ideal conditions is always more nerve-wracking for me when someone else is in the car. But to his credit, Aaron was very sympathetic and quiet. The snow came to a head at Monarch Pass, which, I’m convinced, is a vent over the door to hell. Something always goes wrong there.

Well, we finally made it to Crested Butte and I was to leave the next morning. I think I slept a total of one hour that whole night, tossing and turning, going over all of the potential snowy crash scenarios in my head, all of them looking like when “Toonces the Cat” from Saturday Night Live would drive off the cliff. Another scenario that played in my head was the image of my old car giving up the ghost in those middle-of-nowhere parts of New Mexico. But all of this Doomsday prophecy was tempered with excitement to get moving again. That whole moving thing is a fundamental principal in the allure of the road to me.

The trip back sealed the deal for me. I really enjoyed driving alone. Thinking. Listening to music. Moving. I don’t know why. It’s all kind of mysterious to me. And although Monarch Pass was snowy and scary again, it wasn’t quite as bad in the middle of the day. And it wasn’t quite as bad suffering through it by myself. (I know that last sentence reveals a lot about my psychology. But it’s the truth. I wish it wasn’t. I wish I was more natural with life amongst others, but I’m just not. It takes work for me.)

There is a certain point there, coming south through New Mexico toward I-40, where the road curves around and you see in front of you and all around as far as the horizon-dry, flat, yellow earth. And as you descend hundreds of feet in about five minutes, you know that you’ve seen the last mountains on this trip. It’s kind of a sad moment, like what’s-his-name’s painting of Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden.

But on this trip, the last one I made in my ’90 Honda Accord, it was almost a salvation experience to reach the security of I-40 and head back east.

posted by Mike @ 3:34 PM